Video: Understanding Celsius as a Unit of Temperature

Video Transcript

The table shows the temperatures in some cities in a day. Find the city that has the closest temperature to that of city A.

And then we’ve got a range of different cities with different temperatures. So A is twenty-seven degrees Celsius, B is twenty-five degrees Celsius, C is thirty-eight degrees Celsius, D is thirty-two degrees Celsius, and E is twenty-three degrees Celsius.

Right, let’s picture our thermometer and I’m just gonna map the temperatures onto that thermometer. so A is twenty-seven degrees Celsius, B is twenty-five, C is thirty-eight, D is thirty-two, and E is twenty-three.

Now the question asked us to find the city that has the closest temperature to that of city A. Now I’d have to step up five degrees Celsius to get up to D. But I’d only have to step down two degrees Celsius to get down to B. So the difference in temperature between cities A and D is five degrees Celsius and the difference in temperature between cities A and B is only two degrees Celsius. So city B has got the closest temperature to city A. Now you didn’t have to draw out the scale; you could have just done the calculations by hand and done a bit of subtraction or addition. But our answer either way is city B has the closest temperature to city A.